


I'll Remember Where The Love Was Found If The Plane Goes Down

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 03:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15621231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Sawyer and Juliet realise the reset has worked and they will never meet.





	I'll Remember Where The Love Was Found If The Plane Goes Down

Son of a bitch, Sawyer thought as he realised he was back on Oceanic Flight 815. The Doc’s crazy-ass plan had actually worked. He’d done it. He’d changed the past. 

There was Charlie, right next to him, being chased by that flight attendant from the tail section (what the hell was her name anyway?) There was Shannon and Boone, right by where Charlie was running. Mamacita was there, holding her stomach, and there was the kid, Walt, holding his daddy’s hand. And as Sawyer turned round towards the tail section, he saw that even they were there, Eko praying, Ana Lulu clutching the arms of her seat, Libby trying to calm down a couple of kids.

They were all there, everyone from the island.  
Everyone except for her.

The flight attendant was wandering past Sawyer’s seat now. Without even thinking of what he was going to say, he reached out a hand to stop her.

“Psst. Hey, Skippy.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Are we headin’ to Fiji?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

“Your pilot, he lost radio control. He’s tryin’ to get us to Fiji, right?” It must have been about this time on the original flight when they crashed. They must be off course by now, must be flying over the path of the island. Juliet must be down there, thousands of feet below him, right about now.

But the flight attendant frowned. “The plane’s on its normal course, sir. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is there a problem, Cindy?” Another flight attendant had come over now.

“Forget it,” Sawyer snapped, slamming his arm down against the armrest. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, before glancing back at Cindy again and observing the look of shock on her face.

It had to be, he thought. She’s lookin’ shocked because she knows I’m right. They must be flying over that goddamn rock right about now. Any other time, and he might even have laughed to himself, since the last time he’d seen the island, he’d been on the sub, saying goodbye to it. And hell, at the time he’d meant it.

Shoulda never listened to Freckles, Sawyer thought. If the Doc wanted to blow up the island, they should have left him to it, got on with their own lives. Sure, they’d have been stuck in the decade that taste forgot. But they’d have been together.

Then he shook his head in disgust. He shoulda known that it was never gonna work, had known deep down even as he’d discussed it with Juliet that it could never happen. The person he’d been when he was with Juliet didn’t exist any more, if he ever had at all. And now that the Doc had set off the bomb, he wasn’t going to again. You run, I con. A tiger don’t change its stripes. 

But maybe it could somehow happen, he thought. She had to be down there below him at that moment. Any minute now and he’d be back there again, get the chance to be the man he’d been when he was with Juliet, be able to explain to her what had really been going through his mind when he’d looked at Freckles.

But the turbulence had stopped. As the plane continued its steady course towards LAX, Sawyer realised he was only conning himself after all.

 

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely , you can always go downtown…

Juliet had played that song a lot in the three years since Ben had recruited her. She’d played it at first in the early days of DHARMA as well, before it became too painful to think of the sister who was happy and healthy out there somewhere, but who she would never see again.

She thought about those days now as she realised it was September 22, 2004 again, that oceanic Flight 815 had not crashed on the island, and that thanks to her own actions, it never would.

“If I never meet you, then I never have to lose you,” Juliet had said, and at the time she’d thought that would be true. She’d thought when she activated the bomb that she would be back in 2004 with no memory of the intervening three years. She’d be back where she started, effectively Ben’s prisoner with no hope of seeing Rachel again. And she’d be back in the relationship with Goodwin which she had always known was never going anywhere, not just because of Ben and Harper, but because Juliet had always known that if she ever got the chance to return to Rachel she would have had no hesitation in leaving Goodwin behind.

But if everything had gone the way Juliet expected, then she would never have known that there was anything better out there.

She wouldn’t have had the chance to live among the DHARMA community, where she had been accepted for herself rather than hero-worshipped as the fertility specialist and saviour she could never hope to be. And she would never have met James, the one man in her life who had brought out the best in her, the one who she’d believed had loved her.

Ben may have claimed he loved her, yet Juliet knew what Harper had said about how Juliet “looked just like her”. It seemed like he loved the idea of Juliet more than he could ever love Juliet herself. Edmund - well, even after the eight years she’d known him, Juliet still didn’t understand what went on in his head. And Jack, who had kissed her in order to prove to himself that he wasn’t in love with Kate…even he had never come close.

It didn’t matter this time around when she burned the muffins; she barely felt it when she burned her hand. And her response to Adam was mechanical when he stated that Ben wouldn’t read Carrie in the bathroom. She was thinking that it had been about this time when the room had begun to shake, when they’d all gone running out of the book club meeting and watched as Flight 815 had broken apart before their very eyes.

“You’re not even listening, Juliet,” she heard someone snap, and Juliet realised that she had been waiting for it to happen again, waiting for his plane to fall out of the sky once more.

But it wouldn’t. She’d seen to that herself. His plane was probably flying over her head at that very moment, but it was never going to crash there. James would be carried back to Los Angeles, Juliet would continue with her futile existence on the island, searching for a cure for the mothers that was never going to be found.

They would never meet. And Juliet wondered if James would even know that, whether somewhere up there he was feeling the same as her, whether he remembered anything at all, or whether he was looking at Kate again, or even towards a future including neither of them.

“Hey, Juliet, I think I know what’s up with your plumbing,” Ethan appeared at last, and Amelia joked that it had taken him long enough. Meanwhile Goodwin had come over and put his arms around her, asked her what was wrong, then blinked in surprise when Juliet had pushed him away (how could she explain that she could never go back to him now?)

It had already happened, the future had already changed. Juliet knew now that James was never coming back.

“If I never meet you, then I never have to lose you,” she had said.

She wished that were true.


End file.
